Fair Trade Certification

At Ethical Bean, we’ve built our business on a foundation of fairness because we believe that it’s the right thing to do. In fact, it’s the only way to grow a sustainable business.

Here’s why:

Fairtrade Certified coffee is produced and traded through an alternative system to the conventional global coffee market. Producers are assured a minimum price that is based on the costs of production, not the volatile market price. There is also a Fairtrade premium, which allots additional money to the coffee cooperatives to invest back into their community as they see fit.

As participants in the Fairtrade program, coffee farms and their organizations must follow Fairtrade regulations to ensure that they are operating in a just and sustainable manner. Producers from small family farms must organize themselves into a collective organization or cooperative. These cooperatives are democratically run and producers must follow labour, environmental, and quality standards. Forced labour is prohibited, as is child labour.

Fairtrade International (aka FLO) is the international umbrella organization that sets international Fairtrade standards. In Canada, this organization is Fairtrade Canada, and it is the only independent, third-party certifier of Fairtrade products in the country.